Nuragic Tower Models and Ancestral Memory

Nuragic Tower Models and Ancestral MemoryAuthor(s): R. Ross HollowaySource: Memoirs of the American Academy in Rome, Vol. 46 (2001), pp. 1-9Published by: University of Michigan Press for the American Academy in RomeStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4238777 .

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NURAGIC TOWER MODELS AND ANCESTRAL MEMORY

R. Ross Holloway, Brown University

S ardinia's is a landscape frozen in time. This is less due to the isolated churches that stand witness to the depopulation of the island caused by the Black Death than to the ghostly

presence of the nuraghi, stone towers, numbering perhaps more than seven thousand, that the traveler finds again and again standing as lonely sentinels of a remote past (fig. 1).1 The tower nuraghi, to distinguish them from the platformlike proto-nuraghi, were built over a period of some five hundred years beginning in the mid-second millennium B.C. and developed from simple single towers to complex fortresses with multiple towers and external cur- tain walls. Activity continued in many of them through Punic and Roman times. Although their function was debated in the past, it is now accepted that the nuraghi, like a medieval keep, were intended to offer defense against attack, while at the same time serving as home, barn, and silo for the residents.2

Students of the nuragic age see a manifest change in the Sardinian world about 850 B.C. At this time, corresponding to the beginning of the Nuragic IV period, there are two developments. First, burial in the gallery graves with curved fa,ades (the Tombe dei Giganti) is given up. Second, the production of bronze figures, the bronzetti sardi, continues. The first of these developments marks an abandonment of the use of a common mausoleum for the burial of the members of a single clan.3 The second development is interpreted to show the emergence of leaders of an aristocratically led community. The epoch of construction of nuraghi was also largely over. Carbon 14 and obsidian hydration dates document activity at the sites of nuraghi- and thus the building of the same structures-before the beginning of Nuragic IV. Thus Nuragic IV signals a new approach to burial, a new class of iconographic images, and the end of the building of the towers that had been raised during the preceding five centuries.4 Repairs, of course, were made to towers during Nuragic IV, and in some cases they were strengthened.5 But, to judge from the evidence now on hand, no new towers were built.

1 There is no complete count of the nuraghi, but this is a commonly repeated estimate, e.g., Contu 1985, 5.

2 On the Tombe dei Giganti and nuraghi, see now Blake 2001 in anticipation of more detailed work by Sardinian specialists.

I Webster 1996, 96-99.

4There is much intuitive approximation in the chronolo- gies used for the Nuraghi. The Sardinian C14 dates en- counter the same problems of accommodation of cali- brated dates to chronological indications of other kinds

commonly experienced in Italian and Italian insular archaeology of the second millennium. For a statement of the problem, see Ugas 1998. The best evidence is from Su Nuraxi, Barumini, and it was there that the fourfold division of the Nuragic Period was elaborated in Lilliu 1952-1954 (summarized in Lilliu and Zucca 1988); for C14 dates, see the summary in Webster 1996, 20-21. The general chronology, following Ugas, is Nuragic I, 1600- 1300, Nuragic II, 1300-1150, Nuragic III, 1150-850, Nuragic IV, 850-510. For current revision of chronology, see addendum.

5Notably at Su Nuraxi.



2 R. ROSS HOLLOWAY

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Bortigali (photo author).

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Villanovafranca, altar in Room c

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A major change seen in Nuragic IV is the enlargement of villages. Some had already grown up around nuraghi, as at Su Nuraxi di Barumini or at Palmavera, but these now grew signifi- cantly, in each case creating a village of at least sixty houses.6 Furthermore, in the process new defenses were erected around the perimeter of the settlements. In such an enlarged village the defensive value of the old nuraghi had been severely reduced, if not lost altogether. At Su Nuraxi the houses of Nuragic IV encroached on the outer bastion of the nuraghe.7

6 For Su Nuraxi, see Webster 1996, 96-99; for Palmavera, Moravetti 1992. Similar villages are currently under investigation at Su Mulinu (Villanova-

franca) and Genna Maria (Villanovaforru).

I See the plan in Lilliu 1952-1954, fig. 38.



NURAGIC TOWER MODELS AND ANCESTRAL MEMORY 3

Villages also existed apart from nuraghi. In a surface survey in the area of Dorgali and Oliena, out of 130 nuragic villages located, only 39 were grouped around a nuraghe or had a nuraghe close enough at hand to serve for the protection of the villagers.8

The nuraghi were thus reduced to vestiges of bygone times. Not every Sardinian lived in the shadow of one of these reminders of past ages, and more than a few of the towers continued to serve the purposes of shelter and security for which they had been built. But such ancient wonders were also the stuff of stories and became the haunt of spirits. One recent excavation has illustrated with particular clarity how the nuraghe became a locus religiosus. Deep within the nuraghe of Su Mulinu (Villanovafranca), Giovanni Ugas has discovered a room that functioned as a cult place from the Nuragic IV period until the second century A.D., save for a two-hundred-year span from the late sixth to the late fourth century.9 In the excavator's words, "Toward the end of the tenth or at the beginning of the ninth century B.C.,

the nuraghe of Su Mulinu gave up its primary duty of fortress and became a temple."' 0 Also during that time all the accessories of the cult, various types of hearths, the libation table, the altar basin, lamps and such remain unchanged. Thus rites involving light, ablution, offerings of vegetable matter, of young animals (predominantly piglets), and of precious objects continued for a thousand years. Ugas interprets these rites in connection with initiation into the mysteries of a Sardinian female divinity who lived on in Roman times as Ceres. But from the beginning of the life of the fortress, there was a cult in the same room. This must have been the cult of a tutelary divinity of the tower, and since the later history suggests that a goddess was the patron, we may be justified in seeing the original divinity of the Bronze Age as a house goddess, like Athena on the Acropolis of Athens, Hera at Argos, or, in the Iron Age, Vesta in the house of the Roman kings.

As religion displaced defense as the primary activity in the nuraghe, the building itself, identified for so long with the cult of The Lady, retained its hold on the imagination of wor- shipers. This is shown by the remarkable limestone altar basin of the shrine (fig. 2). The altar was carved to fit into the space it occupies in the corner of the room. It was carved in the shape of a fortress tower, mimicking the fortress of Su Mulinu as it existed in its developed form, in which the central part of the castle had but a single tower projecting from its walls. The nuraghe, no longer a fortress, was now a symbol."

Model nuraghi in bronze and stone are well known from the Nuragic IV period. Alberto Moravetti collected this material in 1980.12 The stone models made of steatite are small, but the sandstone models are of a size (preserved heights up to 66 cm) that would have made them suitable to be the center of attention in any nuragic chamber (fig. 3). Two of them, in fact, seem to have served just such a function. The first is from the nuraghe of Palmavera

8 Fadda 1985 and Manunza 1995.

9 Ugas 1989-1990 and Ugas and Paderi 1990. For the site in general, see Ugas 1987. My visit to Su Mulinu with Dr. Ugas in 1992 gave me one of those unforgettable experiences of feeling the presence of a numen that come rarely but forcefully in the exploration of the vestiges of the distant past.

10 "Verso la fine del X o agli inizi del IX sec. a.C., il nuraghe di Su Mulinu si spoglia della sua veste primaria di fortezza per indossare quella di tempio" (Ugas 1989-1990, 567, noting that the same transfor-

mation is seen at the nuraghi of S. Pietro di Tore, Pitzinnu di Posada, Albucciu di Arzachena, and S'Aneri di Las Plassas).

" The altar basin was adorned with a crescent moon in relief and four swords, their pommels carved and with blades (now missing) presumably in bronze. Nuragic religion was carried on in a variety of settings in addi- tion to the nuraghe temple, namely, the spring temple, the grotto temple, the temple tomb, and the cult house; see Santoni 1985 and Ugas 1985.

12 Moravetti 1980.



4 R. ROSS HOLLOWAY

Fig. 3. Model nuraghe from San Sperate-Oristano (courtesy Electa Archive).

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(fig. 4).13 It was found in a circular room characterized by a low bench that runs completely around its circumference save for the opening of the doorway. In the center of the room there is the foundation for a low pedestal on which the tower model found nearby possibly stood (fig. 5). This room, known as the Capanna delle Riunioni, is clearly not domestic in character but served for formal gatherings of some kind. For our purposes the significant aspect of the room is that those gatherings took place in the presence of an image of a nuragic tower. There is a similar room at the site of Su Nuraxi (Barumini), Room no. 80, and from it comes a similar tower model (fig. 6).14

It is noteworthy that elsewhere the tower models have been found commonly in nuragic sanctuaries, such as Santa Vittoria (Serri) and Sant' Anastasia (Sardara), both complexes cen- tered on springs which in the Nuragic IV period were covered by monumental spring houses.15 The bronze nuraghe model from Ittireddu-Sassari (now in Cagliari) clearly expresses the con- ception of the nuraghe (fig. 7).16 In this small bronze, a tower nuraghe and a smaller rectan- gular building stand side by side. Three birds perch on the roof of the small building, indi- cating that it is a shrine.17 This votive bronze captures in miniature the bipolarity of Sardinian imagery of the Nuragic IV period in which the nuraghe represents a concept different from but no less sacred than that embodied in the small temple.

The tower model also occurs in company with the over-lifesize stone sculptures from Monte Prama (Cabras). This unique group of fragmentary sculptures, from twenty-five different figures, was found in the jumble of fill above a series of equally singular graves.18 The graves were simple pits in which the dead were buried in a sitting position. Only four of the thirty tombs had any furnishings-in terra-cotta, bronze, rock crystal, and glass paste-which set a terminus post quem for the graves of the eighth century so equipped.19 The date of the other tombs is less certain, and the relation between the twenty-five statues and the indi- vidual graves is impossible to determine. Estimates date the statues to the eighth and seventh centuries, and as low as the sixth century.20

The statues belong to iconographical types familiar from the Sardinian bronzetti. Seven- teen of them represent a man holding a shield over his head (figs. 8, 9). The remaining eight are armed with bows (fig. 9). Typically these figures have their arms beside their bodies but with one arm bent at the elbow and holding a bow.

The figures with shields have been dubbed boxers because that interpretation had been given to the similar figurines in bronze. In fact, there are only two such figurines, and of one only the head is preserved.21 The thickened arm of the complete figure seemed to

13 Moravetti 1977 and 1984, with bibliography and fig. 79 (double-page color photo) showing position of the nuraghe model at the time of discovery. Also Lilliu 1982, figs. 214 and 215. I wish to acknowledge my debt to Prof. Moravetti for his many kindnesses during my visit to Sardegna in 1992.

14 Lilliu 1952-1954, 118-121 and fig. 63; Atzeni 1985, fig. 84.

15 Lilliu 1952-1954.

16 Moravetti 1980, fig. 1; Pirovani 1985, no. 8 (color photo); Lilliu 1966, no. 268; height 7.3 cm, base as preserved 7.7 x 9.5 cm. Further bibliography in Lilliu

1997, 297 note 56.

17 So described in Pirovani 1985, text to no. 8. The bird as an epiphany of divinity is well known from Greek religion and the art of the Bronze Age Aegean. The birds of the model's roof cannot be considered acroteria since they are not disposed symmetrically.

18 Tronchetti 1986 and Lilliu 1997.

19 Lilliu 1982, 190.

20 Lilliu 1997, 346.

21 Lilliu 1966, nos. 64 and 65.



6 R. ROSS HOLLOWAY

Fig. 7. Bronze nuraghe modelfrom Ittireddu (photo Soprintendenza Archeologica per le Provincie di Cagliari e Oristano).

jiw

....

Fig. 8. Heroic sculpture from Monte Prama- Cabras (photo M. Balmuth).

commentators, initially G. Lilliu, to suggest the cestus of a boxer. But surely this is a most speculative interpretation and just as surely unsuitable for the grandiose statues of Monte Prama. It would be more appropriate to associate the shield bearers of Monte Prama with the priestly college of the Salii at Rome and other Latian towns. At Rome the processions of the Salii marked the opening and closing of the campaigning season. On these occasions the Salii carried their shields, the ancilia that were stored in the Regia and among which was the original ancile said to have fallen from heaven. The priests halted at set places and performed an elaborate dance, beating their shields with staffs and singing the Carmen Saliare, which was unintelligible to its audience (and probably to the performers) already in the late Repub- lic. Needless to say, the Salii were a patrician priesthood of great distinction.22 Seventeen of the burials at Monte Prama belonged, I believe, to members of a Sardinian college of shield- bearing warrior priests.

It is difficult to be specific about the identity of the archers. They are not shooting, as are the majority of the archers among the bronzetti. And it is only the occasional bronze figurine of an archer at rest who holds his bow in the pose of the Monte Prama figures.23 But there is no reason why these statues, too, should not represent members of another military priesthood.

The scale of hoth sets of figures is important. The over-lifesize scale proclaimed that these priests were worthy of heroic status. The aristocrats of sixth-century Greece sought the same honor by erecting kouroi in heroic nudity over their graves.24

22 Dion. Hal. 2.70; Ov. Fast. 3.365-392; Plut. Vit. Num. 13.

23 Lilliu 1966, no. 30.

24 For kouroi and heroism, see Holloway 1973; and in Italy of early times a leader might even step over the line to become divine like Romulus in his assimilation to Quirinus (Cic. Rep. 2.20, Off. 3.4, Nat. D. 2.62; Plut. Vit. Rom. 28).




Fig. 9. Heroic sculptures from Monte Prama-Cabras, reconstruction (courtesy Electa Archive).

Even more to the purpose of this discussion, stone tower models were found together with the heroic statues at Monte Prama.25 The symbolism of the nuraghe was thus appropriate to this heroic context as well as to the meeting rooms with cult overtones at Palmavera and at Su Nuraxi, and to the ancient house cult of Su Mulinu that lived on into the age which fol- lowed that of the nuragic fortresses. It is, therefore, time to ask what the nuraghi meant to the people who lived in their shadow in the centuries after most had long since served their purpose as strongholds. In a sense, the nuraghi were the heroic past, present in these structures just as it was in the minds of the individuals who set up over-lifesize statues upon the graves of their priestly and heroized kin.

Modern scholarship has endowed nuragic Sardinia with a religion, but not with an epic memory. In a discussion of the tower models we read: "In the baetyl-tower, on the other hand, the 'divine essence' is hidden in the stone which reproduces the fortress-residence of the community, which becomes, by means of this column, also 'the house of God,' defended and protected by his presence."26 Or as it is put by another scholar:

23 One piece is illustrated in Atzeni et al. 1985, fig. 88.

26 Moravetti 1980, 78: "Nei betili-torre, invece, l"essenza

divina' si cala nella pietra che riproduce la dimora-fortezza della comunita, che diviene, tramite il pilastrino, anche la 'casa del Dio,' difesa e tutelata, quindi, dalla sua presenza."



8 R. ROSS HOLLOWAY

In general the models, reproducing the nuraghe in its basic form, metaphorically solidify, one may say, its values: the sign of power, the worth of the real and the personal, symbol of the identity of the earth and emblem of its people. By assimilation, therefore, through the cylindrical form of a column, the cippus-tower-nuraghe becomes a deposit of the divinity and a faceless image of the same. Subject and object of cult, god-tower, god- nuraghe, the cippus emerges as a totem of eternity, in its continuity, of a civilization and of a noble history, eternal reminder of the golden age of the ancient Sardinians.27

But it is unreasonable not to credit the Sardinians of the Iron Age with a heroic memory and an active mythology. The strong men of their past were the lords of the fortress nuraghi, and the omnipresence of these towers was a reminder of those great days and the great deeds of valor performed by the heroes.

The reverence for places connected with the Bronze Age past is not unique to Sardinia. The Athenians of the classical age held the vestiges of the Bronze Age fortress and palace of the Acropolis in equal awe. They preserved as much as they could of the old Bronze Age fortifications and kept alive the memory of the Strong House of Erechtheus on the hill.28 But the Sardinians went further, preserving their memories of the nuragic fortresses and nuragic warriors in the simple icon of the tower model.29

Addendum

Nuragic chronology is currently undergoing-a major modification. All dates are becoming earlier by approximately a century, and new period terminology is being introduced. See F. Lo Schiavo, "Late Cypriot Bronzeworkers in Sardinia, Italy and Elsewhere in the West," in L. Bonfante and V. Karageorghis, eds., Italy and Cyprus in Antiquity 1500-450 B.C. (Nicosia 2001) 131-152, esp. table fig. 1.

27 Lilliu 1997, 296: "Nel generale i modellini, ripro- ducendo il nuraghe pur nella sua forma elementare, ne impietrano per cosi dire le valenze, metaforicamente: il segno del potere, il valore nel reale e nell'intimo, simbolo d'identita della terra ed emblema del suo popolo. Assimilato, per la forma troncoconica del fusto, il cippo- torre-nuraghe diventa 'deposito' della divinita e immagine senza volto della stessa. Soggetto ed oggetto di culto, dio-torre, dio-nuraghe, il cippo emerge come

'totem' dell' eternita, della continuita, d'una civilta e di una storia virtuosa, perenne ricordo dell' eta dell' oro degli antichi sardi."

28 See Hurwit 1999.

29 The author is grateful to Dr. Fulvia Lo Schiavo for kindly reading this text during the course of publication and for welcoming me to Sassari in 1992.




Bibliography

Atzeni, E., et al., eds., Ichnussa (Milan 1985). Blake, E., "Constructing a Nuragic Locale: The Spatial Relationship between Tombs and Towers in

Bronze Age Sardinia," American Journal of Archaeology 105 (2001) 145-162. Contu, E., "L'architettura nuragica," in Atzeni et al., eds., 1985, 5-178. Fadda, M. A., "II villaggio," in Pirovani, ed., 1985, 111-118. Holloway, R., A View of Greek Art (Providence 1973). Hurwit, J. M., The Athenian Acropolis (Cambridge 1999). Lilliu, G., "II nuraghe di Barumini e la stratigrafia nuragica," Studi Sardi 12-13 (1952-1954) 1-354.

, Sculture della Sardegna nuragica (Verona 1966). La civiltd nuragica (Sassari 1982). La grande statuaria nella Sardegna nuragica (Rome 1997). Atti della Accademia Nazionale dei

Lincei, Classe di Scienze Morali, Storiche e Filologiche, Memorie ser. 9, vol. 9, fasc. 1. Lilliu, G., and R. Zucca, Su Nuraxi di Barumini (Sassari 1988). Manunza, M. R., Dorgali (Oristano 1995). Moravetti, A., "Nuove scoperte nel villaggio nuragico di Palmavera (Alghero-Sassari)," Rivista discienze

preistoriche 32 (1977) 277-281. , "Nuovi modellini di torri nuragiche," Bollettino d'arte 45 (1980) 65-84. , "Alghero (Sassari) Loc. Palmavera," in E. Anati, ed., I Sardi (Milan 1984) 222-223. , II complesso nuragico di Palmavera (Sassari 1992).

Pirovani, C., ed., Sardegna Preistorica (Milan 1985). Santoni, V., "I templi di eta nuragica," in Pirovani, ed., 1985, 181-208. Tronchetti, C., "Nuragic Statuary from Monte Prama," in Studies in Sardinian Archaeology II, ed. M.

Balmuth (Ann Arbor 1986) 41-60. Ugas, G., "Il mondo religioso nuragico," in Pirovani, ed., 1985, 209-216.

- , "La fortezza di Su Mulinu-Villanovafranca (CA). Un nuovo contributo per lo studio della tholos in Sardegna," in Studies in Sardinian Archaeology III, ed. M. Balmuth (Oxford 1987) 77-128. Brit- ish Archaeological Reports International Series 387.

, "II sacello del vano E nella fortezza nuragica di Su Mulinu-Villanovafranca (CA)," Scienze dell' Antichitd 3-4 (1989-1990) 551-573.

, "Considerazioni sulle seguenze culturali e cronologiche tra l'eneolitico e l'epoca nuragica," in M. Balmuth and R. Tykot, eds., Sardinian and Aegean Chronology: Towards the Resolution of Rela- tive and Absolute Dating in the Mediterranean (Oxford 1998) 251-272.

Ugas, G., and M. Cristina Paderi, "Persistenza rituali e cultuali in eta punica e romana nel sacello nuragico del vano e della fortezza di Su Mulinu-Villanovafranca (Cagliari)," L'Africa romana (Sassari 1990) 465-486. Atti del VIII convegno di Studio Pubblicazioni del Dipartimento di Storia dell'Universita degli Studi di Sassari.

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